Current Student: Undergraduate; Current Student: Postgraduate; Community Event; Forum/symposium; Seminar/Workshop/Training

Throughout all ages, if poets have vision to prophesy truth, I shall live in my fame

Ovid died 2000 years ago... well, we think he did. The writer of the Metamorphoses, Rome’s most urbane and witty poet, had been banished by the unrelenting emperor Augustus; and no contemporaries noted the exact date of his death. In the twenty centuries since, Ovid has influenced numerous writers, including Chaucer, Dante, and Shakespeare, as well as a multitude of artists and composers. Why was the unrivalled literary star of his generation sent to the cold shores of the Black Sea? And how, even though Augustus removed his poems from Rome’s public libraries, did Ovid’s verses survive?

Speaker

Dr Rhiannon Evans is Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at La Trobe University, where she teaches Latin and Ancient Roman culture. Rhiannon is interested in Roman literature of the first centuries BCE and CE, and is currently working on Julius Caesar’s account of the conquest of Gaul. She has published a book on the Golden Age and Utopianism in Roman literature.

This event is part of the La Trobe Classics in the City seminar series.